I like ideas, but sometimes it’s good to share what we do with them: today is a post in that vein. I’ve written a lot recently about my Scaffolded Social Learning model. Today, i want to share an example of it in action. This is a module designed to take two to three hours to complete and is part of a six month Social Leadership development programme.
To recap: Scaffolded Social Learning is a design methodology that utilises both formal and co-created social elements. The formal components allow the organisation to feed in it’s side of the story, whilst the co-created community discussions are ‘sense making‘, where we construct the meaning and relate it to our everyday reality. You can read more about Scaffolded Social Learning here, and more about the types of interactions we utilise here.
So the model i present here is in four parts, each representing a different co-creative or social learning aspect, and it’s exploring who an organisation’s competitors are and what we can learn from them. Essentially, the learning narrative is this: instead of us telling you who our competitors are, and why, we ask people to explore the market, bring us examples, think about how they are competing and how we can behave differently as a result. This is done through four behaviours: curation, interpretation, reflection and analysis.

A scaffolded Social Learning solution will include both bubbles and boxes, a combination of formal and social spaces
First we ask delegates to go out and find competitors, but we encourage them to deviate from the obvious: we use the formal component (in this case a ten minute podcast) to talk about asymmetrical competition, which is where small, emergent or startup organisations can subvert the market of established players. Take Uber, which has broken the taxi business.
People reach out and curate their examples, then move into interpretation, where we ask them to make sense of it. The sense making is initially a storytelling piece: what have you bought, how is it relevant and timely, to whom, and why? So the first interpretive layer is individual, but is shared in the communal space. We then critique each others interpretation. We ask delegates to sort all the stories into types, e.g. competition based on technology, innovation, leadership etc. This is a group sense making activity.
From there, we move to reflection, in this case, asking the question, “now that i’ve seen how they differ, what permissions, spaces, leadership or technology do they have that i don’t?”. We then work with the group to explore questions of ‘what does that mean?’, and ‘what can i change’, so we move from analytical to purposeful (which is vital for agility).
Finally, analysis: how would you behave differently if you had those permissions? Then, in the group, how do we gain that competitive advantage? This starts to move us into purposeful planning, but in a co-created and co-owned way, which is the model of change i advocate for the Social Age.
This is just one model, one example of application, but alongside the theoretical framework and description of behaviours, I hope it helps expand the conversation about application.
Reblogged this on teaching knowledge and creativity.
Pingback: Scaffolded Social Learning in action: exploring...
Pingback: Disruption: Catalyst of the Social Age | Julian Stodd's Learning Blog
Will your model help educators and students become more articulate? Do you have an experiment devised to test the final result? A huge problem that our educational system has is that it put a lot of information in front of students and our system has not articulated the need, and the student who becomes a teacher, ends up doing it as a career choice that is tied to a emotional decision, that leaves an educator in front of people teaching abstract concepts, that don’t really help our society.
We need better ways to organize and disseminate information to students. The goal should be focused on understanding of the material, and the student being able to explain the materiel.
If education always followed what algebra has taught us( going from something we know to something new or not previously known) we would have a system that used the creative ideas-your idea- properly. But it needs to pass a test on a large population first. Using a theory on students is not responsible.
Pingback: Tokens and Totems | Julian Stodd's Learning Blog
Pingback: This Week’s Links « Timothy Siburg
Pingback: The New Utility: A Story about Brand in the Social Age | Julian Stodd's Learning Blog
Pingback: Now you see it… Augmented Reality in Learning | Julian Stodd's Learning Blog
Pingback: The CEDA Model: checking the vitality of Social Learning communities | Julian Stodd's Learning Blog
Pingback: The CEDA Community model Pt.1: ‘Curation’ and ‘Technology’ in Social Learning | Julian Stodd's Learning Blog
Pingback: Reflecting on Engagement in the Social Age | Julian Stodd's Learning Blog
Pingback: Humility in Leadership | Julian Stodd's Learning Blog
Pingback: An introduction to Scaffolded Social Learning | Julian Stodd's Learning Blog
Pingback: The 3 Levels of Narrative: Personal Narrative | Julian Stodd's Learning Blog
Pingback: Developing Social Roles in your Organisation | Julian Stodd's Learning Blog
Pingback: Train Your Competitors | Julian Stodd's Learning Blog
Pingback: 10 Tips For Designing Effective Social Learning | Julian Stodd's Learning Blog
Pingback: Developing a Learning Architecture. A #WorkingOutLoud Post | Julian Stodd's Learning Blog
Pingback: The Invisible Organisation: Why Social Leadership? | Julian Stodd's Learning Blog
Pingback: Learning 2017 | Julian Stodd's Learning Blog
Pingback: How Virtual Learning Works by Unlocking Curiosity [Pt 3] | Julian Stodd's Learning Blog